Filling time

Now that I am not watching telly in the evenings four days a week, I have decided to take up a new hobby and and am now going to Show and Tell all about it!

You might think that I already have enough to do in the evenings, but I do like variety and the option of being able to pick and choose what I want to do in an evening and let me tell you now....there is absolutely no way that I will ever study four or five hours in an evening after a day at work, I am just not going to do that as I wasn't built that way! (is anybody!?!)

For a while now, I have been wanting to learn about this particular craft and to attempt it for myself, but every book about it that I have looked at has just freaked me out because there are pictures of so many beautiful and creative versions of the finished products related to this craft and I just haven't known how to begin.

Anyway, I went looking for a card-craft shop the other weekend as it had recently moved premises. Having bought some nice paper I then walked back to the car and spotted that there was another craft shop in the same shopping area. It perked my interest, so I wandered in and had a look at the materials and chatted to Yvonne, the shop owner and asked if she held classes.

Of course, she said yes and so yesterday I went back and began learning all about this new-to-me craft and I had two hours of fun choosing materials and deciding how to lay them out. Yvonne was great too, very patient and explaining things clearly, not to mention suggesting that I only buy one or two bits of equipment until I decide that I will lay out the money to have a few more bits at home as I can use the cutters and irons at her shop.

So....what is it? Perhaps a picture will help?

The picture may not necessarily make sense to you unless you have done or seen this before, but this is very very beginning of a Christmas Quilt. Yes, I am learning how to make a quilt using the usual technique of patchwork (although I always thought that patchwork WAS quilting - to me the two are the same thing!), and what I have to do is create a pattern that has three squares in a row and three rows in a block, so you can see that the above picture really is the very early stages of this quilt!

I have got to make several more squares and blocks and then put them all together to make a quilt. Quite how big this quilt will be I do not know, perhaps it will just be a lap-quilt that I can snuggle under in my armchair when it is cold and blowy outside. I don't think that I am up to making a double bed-sized quilt just yet!! That may take a few years, but in the meantime I am having great fun making this one. Perhaps in a few "show and tells" later I will show you where I have gotten to.